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Thursday, April 16, 2015

I was telling my husband about Delilah S. Dawson's post
about authors and self-promotion
(for another perspective, read S.J. Pajonas' response)
and we wound up having a long conversation about marketing. During the
conversation, he reminded me that the horror film PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
basically sat on a shelf and went without distribution for two years. For a film that became such a monster hit, that is a long time in the film world.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY has been a runaway success and spawned multiple
sequels, but it didn't get instant theatrical distribution upon completion. It
almost goes without saying that getting distribution can be very difficult to
attain for independent films that lack big stars (and by “big,” I mean A-list).
It's mainly because Steven Spielberg saw and pushed PARANORMAL ACTIVITY that it
received a green light for its high-profile, multi-screen theatrical release. Here's
the path the film took according to its Wikipedia
entry:

The film was
screened at 2007's Screamfest Horror Film Festival, where it
impressed an assistant at the Creative
Artists Agency,
Kirill Baru, so much that CAA
signed on to represent Peli. Attempting to find a distributor for the film
and/or directing work for Peli, the agency sent out DVDs of the movie to as
many people in the industry as they could, and it was eventually seen by Miramax Films Senior Executive
Jason Blum, who thought it had potential. He worked with Peli to re-edit the
film and submitted it to the Sundance
Film Festival,
but it was rejected. The DVD also impressed DreamWorks executives Adam
Goodman, Stacey Snider, and finally Steven Spielberg, who cut a deal
with Blum and Peli.

After an exhausting week-long shoot, Peli spent a year editing the film on
his PC. He added the CGI and did the audio mixing. Every few months he'd invite
friends and neighbours over for a viewing and respond to their feedback. He was
still editing in autumn 2007 when the film was accepted at Screamfest,
the small Los Angeles festival for homemade horror. Audience members covered
their eyes, cuddled each other, screamed and howled. Peli was relieved.

People started blogging about Paranormal Activity but it didn't have a
distributor. Then, over the course of the next 18 months, several things
happened to propel the film into the stratosphere. Peli met Jason Blum, a
producer who had passed on Blair Witch ten years ago, and Blum got a copy of it
to Steven Spielberg. In what is fast becoming either an urban myth, a smart
piece of marketing or a scary true story, Spielberg was not only disturbed by
the film but also petrified to find a door in his house inexplicably locked
from the inside. The DVD was promptly taken away in a bag and Spielberg became
one of the film's biggest advocators.

The key event seems to be acceptance of the film by the Screamfest Horror
Film Festival. The filmmakers didn't wait for people to come to them; they used
a film festival as a way to spread the word and obtain distribution. Lucky for
them, a CAA staff member was in the audience (it's also possible the filmmakers
knew Screamfest was frequented by influential Hollywood people, which in that
case makes their strategy all the more savvy). If Kirill Baru hadn't been
there, things probably would have gone differently.

Sitting two years on the shelf usually means a film like PARANORMAL
ACTIVITY is dead in the water (or least condemned to a low profile,
straight-to-video release) but in light of the film's success the anecdote
blows apart the myth of "if you build it, they will come." That film
took off like wildfire after Steven Spielberg
became involved and perhaps even only
because he became involved (at the very least, his involvement gave it the best
chance possible).

Why on Earth didn't anyone prior to the film festival
screening understand the film's profit potential? If one evaluates the film on
box office success alone, its value should have been glaringly obvious from the
beginning. Answer: because the film, by itself, wasn't obviously profitable. Just like many other films—and sci-fi
romance books. Is it a good film? Many people clearly think so. Regardless, the
filmmakers built it, but at first, no one came. And that was because no one
knew about it.

So what can we use here as a takeaway for SFR?

Everything needs a boost, even if
it's simply telling five friends that you've written a sci-fi romance. Who
knows—for some people, one of those five could be someone with a high profile and
extensive influence (one can hope, anyway!).

Boosts come in all shapes and sizes,
and include things like a traditional publishing contract with mainstream print
distribution. Sites like Amazon and Smashwords are powerful enough that even a
complete unknown author with zero social media presence can net a few sales
simply by uploading a book. Even publishing multiple books is its own form of
marketing. Additionally, boosts can range from flashy to functional.

A non-boost approach is akin to
gathering a pile of sticks and hoping they catch fire on their own.

Boosts may also work in mysterious
ways, or may not be immediately obvious.

Hugh Howey: Oh really? That was the whole story
and I had such low hopes for this story because it wasn’t a commercial, the
length and price, that I didn’t even really mention it. I didn’t put a link on
my website for it. I didn’t tweet about it or put it on Facebook.

I didn’t do anything for it. I just put it out there and started working on
my next novel. That was in July of 2011, late July. In October about two months
later it sold 1,000 copies that month and I had never sold 1,000 copies in a
single title in a year. Even though it was $0.99 this was like $350 that I had
earned for that month.

For all I knew this was going to be the best month that I ever had in my
writing career and it was still significant for me. This is crazy. We’re going
to pay a couple of bills and I’ve got 1,000 people who’ve downloaded and read a
work of mine. The emails and the reviews and all that that came in was just
life changing.

Mr. Howey also stated he has "never
paid for a book review" to
boost sales of his books, which is all well and good, but his admission doesn't
mean nothing happened behind the scenes to give WOOL in particular a boost of
some kind. Even self-publishing it on Amazon created a boost (and a more
effective one, than, say, offering the story for sale on his Web site).

It's silly to assume—without incontrovertible proof—that successful
authors like Mr. Howey didn't do any form of marketing other than write and
upload/traditionally publish their books. It's also possible strategies he used
previously were key to WOOL's success and he's just not aware of it.

The narrative a highly visible,
bestselling author might tell about his or her book simply taking off (perhaps
because of timing/luck/quality) and becoming a huge success is in and of itself
a form of marketing, especially if said author keeps repeating that story in
various interviews, articles, and blog posts. The hopeful message is, "If
it can happen to me, it can happen to you." It's what many authors,
artists, and filmmakers want to believe will happen with their art. Who can
blame them? But guess what? That message is being generated to market the person saying it. They're
attributing their success to luck and timing while
at the same time using that message to market themselves. Very savvy approach,
actually.

The bottom line is that for marketing to happen, connections of some
kind have to be made and usually are made even if we're not aware of them. Regardless of quality, books (and films) need to be marketed (preferably of the big kind if you can get
it, heh) in order to gain visibility. Are some boosts more effective than
others? Of course. There are no easy answers or magic bullet, and it's somewhat unfortunate
that marketing has to compromise as much as 50% or more of the solution, but
that's the reality.

tl;dr: Smart marketing that's respectful toward readers takes a lot of work, but it can be a positive thing for sci-fi
romance overall.

Joyfully yours,

Heather

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About Me: Heather travels the sea of stars for news about science fiction romance. She's also an author in the genre. To get in touch, you can email her, or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

About Me

Heather’s debut sci-fi romance novel, Once Upon a Time in Space, features the last living descendant of Christopher Columbus on a desperate quest to find a new world. Standing in his way is Raquel, the deadliest space pirate in the galaxy.